olicitor who sent hundreds of letters to schools across the country during the Covid pandemic has told a tribunal she did so in a bid to protect children.
Lois Yvonne Bayliss, of Sheffield-based Broad Yorkshire Law, is alleged to have threatened civil and/or criminal liability if the recipients required face masks to be worn in schools, carried out routine lateral flow tests or facilitated Covid vaccinations for children aged 12-17.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority said the letters were written on Bayliss’s firm’s headed paper, with covering emails from its email address, and were sent to 247 schools and academies. Bayliss is also alleged to have encouraged 48 other people to send similar letters.
Giving evidence during the second day of a Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal hearing, Bayliss, admitted in 2006, said she had not been acting under instructions and ‘had no intention of making a claim’.
She added: ‘I had no intention of taking any action even though I knew of children being harmed. I just did not want to get involved in that side of it. I did not want to earn off the back of this. It was all about protection.’
Bayliss told the tribunal her ‘main concern was the children’ and if people got in touch to ask for the letters, she would share them. Asked if she thought it was ‘dangerous’ that a solicitor’s letter was freely available to be shared or distributed, Bayliss said: ‘No, what I think is dangerous is children being vaccinated in schools when there are more harms than benefits.’
